BOO! I'm baaaaaccckk....
New comic images, UFO Deep Dive, and More!
Helloooooo, Spooky Explorers of the Unknown!
I’ve been on hiatus for awhile, but I have some exciting news about my comic to share below! First a little housekeeping:
The goal of creating Next Stop Unknown is to keep in touch with and provide some value to people who are fans of my creative work. The comics business can be a slow moving machine, so until I start producing comics at a more regular cadence, the newsletter is intended to fill the gaps when nothing new is coming out.
The past year or so of publishing NSU was more or less an experiment to practice several things: creating new content around a full time work schedule, finding my voice as a journalistic writer, discovering what content I like producing and how long it takes me to produce, and, most of all, figuring out what I need to do to make the newsletter sustainable over a long period of time.
On the flip side of that, I have also been trying to find out what people who sign up for my newsletter value most in these emails. My following is still limited, so it is hard to gather much from that data. I have been able to learn a few things, however, and I want to continue experimenting to see if I can find the right balance.
For now, instead of putting lots of content once a month in an email, I am going to do a shorter email to be posted on Sunday mornings. (I thought about doing Saturday, but since I am usually working on my posts is on Saturdays, I thought Sunday might be best.) This will be semi-regular for a while—shooting for bi-weekly but at least once a month depending on what news and content I have available.
For content, I’ll continue to drop some news about my comics and other projects, a few reviews, and my regular deep dives on things I enjoy: comics, paranormal activity, Japanese culture, creating art, and storytelling in general.
In the meantime, feel free to let me know what you like to see most! I am doing this newsletter to create a deeper connection with people like you who have shown an interest in my creative work. So send me a note or write in the comments anything you’d like to see. Or just say hi!
With that out of the way, here’s the latest in my world:
Comic Book News: The Airship Pages are Finished!
All the pages of my one shot, the Airship, are now complete! There were some delays finishing the pages, but all the inks, colors, and lettering are DONE. We are now in the process of securing cover artists, and I just heard back from an artist I am very excited about to do a variant cover for the comic. Stay tuned for more on that later!
Because the publishing timeline got pushed back again, don’t expect to see this comic in your hands until sometime early next year. :(
But in the meantime, enjoy a few gorgeous preview images from the comic by the talented, Nico Longoria!
Deep Dives
Moving forward, I am going to try something a little different. I am going to try sending out my Substack columns (Deep Dives, Unknown Japan, Reviews & Recommends, etc.) during the week in individual emails as I complete them. Then I will also include the links in these weekend newsletters, so if you miss the column email during the week, you can still catch them here in this email.
For now, here’s a link to my latest deep dive which is also a review of some cool new UFO documentaries:
Two New UFO Docu-series You Should Definitely Watch!
I recently watched two UFO series, one on Netflix and one on Disney+, and they are exceptional. Following the recent congressional hearings, we are entering a new era in the study of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs), and I talk all about what that means in this deep dive. Plus, some very interesting revelations surrounding a skeptic of the Ariel School encounter unmask some intriguing insights into human nature and what it means to be an experiencer.
Secret Arts and Forbidden Knowledge
I want to continue to share my art as I create it, and also keep sharing the best tips and tricks I find on my art journey. Since my output of personal art is irregular, I’ll probably save this for the weekend emails, but I may send out new art in individual emails to see what kind of response I get.
This month I am doing the October drawing challenge mostly to practice some self discipline creating on a regular schedule. I’m doing a new drawing every other day vs everyday since that has worked best for me in the past, but I’ve still had a couple misses this year. Even so, I’m having a lot of fun! You can follow me on my instagram for more. In the meantime, here’s a ghost lady to keep you up at night:
BONUS:
For all you artists out there, Proko has been putting out some top notch tutorial videos recently that I have been watching. I learned a lot from this video on creating dynamic gesture poses:
Next Time!
I have a deep dive I want to do on a recent anime I watched that blew me away called Girls Last Tour. In the process of writing about it, I started to discover more philosophy terms and interesting studies of the “slice of life” genre. I want to dig deeper into those studies in my review, so be on the lookout for that sometime soon!
Sterling Martin is a writer, artist, and designer living in Chicago, IL. His background includes drawing, writing, theatre, teaching, improv & sketch comedy, and whatever else he can get his hands on to be creative. You can find him on the internet at:
Instagram: @sterfest.art
Website: sterlingmartin.design
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